


Let's Kiss The Sun

by seventhTense



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Adventure and Romance, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, BotW-style World, Dragon-shifter Goro, Fluff and Angst, Inns and Bards, M/M, Monster Hunters, Traveler Akira, all that good stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:26:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22476343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhTense/pseuds/seventhTense
Summary: For a few years now, Akira's day-to-day routine has consisted of traveling across the Wilds, scrounging for what resources and food he could find from nature and monsters alike. It's been lonely, but he's good at what he does, and it's a hell of a lot better living like this than how he used to live before.A vicious, mighty wind- or more accurately, the source of said wind- changes that day-to-day routine for good.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Comments: 10
Kudos: 83





	1. Chapter 1

Akira pulled an arrow from his quiver, pausing for a moment to feel around with his thumb and check how many he had left. _About four... this had better work out..._

He nocked the arrow, pulling back the string as he took aim at the little monster he had been stalking- a short, stocky, green-skinned pest the people of the valley called Mokoi. Its skin looked more like greenish clay than actual flesh, and it tottered about the edge of the grassy plain spread out before Akira like a fawn still learning how to walk- but its innocent appearance was notoriously deceptive, and was instantly undercut anyways by the hand-crafted, shoddy wooden weaponry its kind always carried around on them.

Akira waited just a beat longer to make absolutely certain it wouldn’t move out of the way, then let his arrow go, the sharp little missile whistling through the air until it landed solidly inside the beast’s skull. The thing fell limply to the side, then _poof_ ed into a plume of black-purple smoke, leaving only the few physical items it had been carrying behind.

Akira let out the breath he had been holding, slumping with relief in the bush he had been hiding in. He clambered out and headed down the hill, towards the rarely-used but still well-worn dirt road the little monster had been wandering around. Akira took care to check all around himself for any other hostile beasites that might try to attack him while his defenses were down, then, seeing nothing, bent down to rummage through what the creature had left behind. 

The most notable and useful find was a bow, which Akira was _very_ grateful for. The one he used to fell the Mokoi was one he had looted from the remains of _another_ Mokoi a week ago, and was close to falling apart by now. There were a handful more arrows too, plus a hunk of flint and a whole, uncooked fish. 

Beautiful.

Veins thrumming with victory and stomach already rumbling, Akira quickly gathered all his newfound treasure as best he could. Not wanting to waste anything, he slung both his new and old bows around his chest, the wood arm resting on his back. The arrows he slotted into his quiver, a simple but well-made thing he traded a chunk of topaz for with a caravan he happened to run into, months ago. The flint he stored in his satchel, a simple, sizable bag of leather hanging off his belt, and the fish he kept in the bag hanging on his opposite side- leather as well, but lined with a tough, coarse fabric that wouldn’t get ruined by the fish’s scales scraping against its sides, or its residual oil leaking all over the place.

His stuff secured, Akira got back to his feet and headed off, back towards the line of trees and bushes from where he came, towards camp. He hadn’t been in this area for very long, only arriving a day ago, but the site he had found to camp in was nice and secure, a little miniature cave carved into the rock of a small mountain, and assuming the Mokoi he killed hadn’t traveled far, there was likely a river nearby with fish lazy enough to be caught by the tottering little things. With luck, Akira would be able to stay around these parts for another week, maybe two, before having to head off, either to travel far enough to avoid the soon-to-come rainy season, or to find one of the combination Stable and Inns dotted about the wilderness, and hope they’d accept some of the treasure he’d amassed as trade for shelter and food until the rain had passed.

For now, though, he had weaponry to tend to- fresh off a Mokoi’s back, the things usually needed a bit of sanding and polishing before human hands could reliably use them- and, more excitingly, fish to cook up. Akira had been surviving for the last few days on some old, poorly-salted jerky he’d made, and was relishing the chance for some fresh food-

Halfway through a step, Akira paused. He looked around himself- the line of trees had given way to a sizeable clearing, about half a kilometer or so away from his camp. There was nothing immediately noticeable around him, no monsters, no wild animals flitting about, no birds, nothing. If Akira stopped breathing, tuned out the sound of his own heartbeat, he’d hear absolute, total silence all around him, no matter how hard he strained his ears.

Just silence. 

And an unshakable, down-to-the-bone, pervading sense of oncoming danger.

Without warning, the silence was broken by a heavy, weighty, airy _thump_ , and then another, and another, each louder than the last, each closer than the last. Akira cast his eyes around the clearing for the source of the noise, but with every _thump, thump, thump,_ he couldn’t figure out a direction the sound was originating from, the weight of the noise landing all around him, from every angle-

On instinct, Akira looked straight up, and then he saw it.

Having just breached the cover of the clouds a second or two ago, a massive, truly, staggeringly _massive_ black figure was bearing down on Akira’s position at a steep angle. Its wingspan was unimaginably vast, longer than anything Akira had ever seen in his life, and the size of its body, black and sharp and glistening in the shaft of sunlight that followed it down through the hole it left in the clouds only became more and more terrifyingly enormous the closer it got. 

Akira looked frantically around him for some place to run, but the thing had already seen him, clearly knew right where he was, and with a monster of that size, there was no point in trying to hide or run for cover. He reached for his bow, but stopped not even halfway, knowing that arrows would be worse than useless against a creature like this. He looked back up at it, desperately hoping that he might have been wrong, that it might be angling for something else-

-faster than Akira expected, the beast landed, impacting the ground so hard and so heavy that it knocked Akira off his feet, the impact hitting him like the skull of a charging animal, right in his chest. He managed to get back to his feet, rubbing his eyes to clear them of dirt and dust and hazy, fuzzy spots, as he tried to get a good look at the monster through the dust cloud its landing had created...

Another _thump_ , the beat of its wings shoving any air foolish enough to be near it out of its way, and the dust cleared, and there it was.

Standing just a handful of meters before Akira was a Dragon, a capital-D Dragon. It was covered in extremely sharp, arrowhead-shaped scales, black as the void behind one’s eyelids. Its claws dug into the earth, ploughing the grass and dirt up around them like the roots of a thousand-year old tree, their points finer and sharper than the tip of any spear Akira had even heard of. Covered by scales as they were, the muscles in its legs rippled with even the smallest movement the Dragon made, its chest doing the same as it caught its breath. Its neck rose, long and regal, high above the tops of the trees behind it, and it looked at Akira with a disdainful sneer, showing off its many, many, many too-sharp teeth.

The Dragons eyes _burned_ , glowing a deep crimson red that seemed to seep out from the sockets, trails of shimmering red energy trailing up and dissipating in the air above it. They had no pupils, no feature other than burning, blazing red, but somehow Akira still knew that they were staring right at him, the Dragon’s gaze locked with his.

Akira took a deep breath, a very slow, very long one, and just briefly closed his eyes.

He thought of the life he had led, of all he had seen. The injustices he had been witness to, the far more injustices he had been victim of. The powerful men that had torn his life, his home, his family from him, the uncaring, fearful family and neighbors that had made it barely a home to begin with, the rejection he faced so often, the kindnesses he received so rarely.

Akira had not lived a cursed life, per se, but neither had he lived a blessed one, by any means. His life had been, by and large, pretty shit, controlled and destroyed always by those with more power than an outsider like him could ever hope to attain, had he even wanted it in the first place. The Dragon facing him now was _terrifying_ , there were no two ways about that, but... the feeling of facing down a power he could never hope to match, could never hope to withstand, was a feeling all-too familiar to Akira Kurusu.

He opened his eyes, and with eyes full of pure, unadulterated _defiance_ , he gazed back into the eyes of his destroyer.

Silence held reign over the clearing, for several moments, then a minute, then two. The Dragon did not move, did not leap to attack, only stared Akira down, wet, ragged puffs of air ghosting out from its snout and between its teeth like steam from a hot spring. After five minutes of silence, Akira’s determined, rebellious expression unchanging all the while, but his mind slowly starting to scream with ever-increasing nervousness, the Dragon shifted, its eyes narrowing, the corner of its mouth pulling upwards in what Akira would call annoyance, were the Dragon capable of human emoting.

It reared its neck back, sucking in air in a sudden, vicious stream that tugged at Akira’s arms and cloths, then let loose a horrible, vicious, insane roar, the maw of its mouth pointed at the sky, the ferocity of the cry sending every and any living thing kilometers around fleeing, if they hadn’t fled already. 

Akira felt all feeling leave his limbs, his chest. The only points he still could sense sensation in were his heart and his head. Terror, more than any a mortal being should ever have to experience washed over him, coated him, would have drowned him were it not for the unflinching, stubborn-as-the-earth-itself determination lit within him, a single, overpowering emotion that Akira clung to with every ounce of life he had left in him.

The Dragon peered back down at him, the folds of skin and scales above its eyes raising as if in surprise that Akira was still standing there. It considered him again, snaking its long neck around to peer at him from several angles, an aura of bewildered curiosity radiating out from the beast. Akira kept his gaze locked with the Dragon’s all the while, or at least he tried to, his neck only being able to reach so far compared to the beast.

A few moments more of investigating, and the Dragon’s curiosity seemed sated. Head returning to where it started, its lips drew back, revealing more arm-length, horrifically sharp teeth than a man could count without going mad, and with the few scraps of conscious, observational thought Akira had left, he thought it looked like it was... smirking. 

It started to let out a noise, horrible and caustic, but unmistakable all the same- laughter, a slow, wild chuckle that shook the leaves of the trees around them. The black of its scales seemed to become blacker, somehow, radiating pure, featureless blackness more and more until Akira realized that they must be _glowing_ , and the glow grew stronger, and stronger still, enveloping the form of the Dragon, then shifting, twisting, shrinking, and all the while, the mad, deeply amused laughter continued, echoing throughout the clearing, lessening in volume and growing in familiarity as what must be a transformation continued-

-until it stopped, the black glow fading away to reveal a man walking towards Akira from where the Dragon had been moments before, hand to his head, laughing up a storm. He was about Akira’s height, maybe a little taller, clad in a vicious-looking black armor that looked just like the scales of the Dragon, had there been a smith in the world brave and talented enough to forge them into plating. The man pulled off his draconian helmet with one clawed gauntlet, revealing and tossing a head of long, well-maintained, beautiful warm-brown hair. His face was thin- not emaciated, as if he went hungry often, but fine and elegant, like the paintings of nobles Akira had seen in the Grand Hall of his village as a youth.

The man gripped his helmet in hand as he approached Akira, chuckles dying down, and he opened his eyes, stopping just a foot or two away from Akira, regarding him with eyes of a similar red hue as the Dragon, though not glowing, and a smile that was as jagged and vicious and amused as any expression Akira had seen- one that absolutely would not have looked out of place on the Dragon itself.

He put a hand on his hip, armor clinking with the movement, and jerked his head towards Akira, clearly more accustomed to gesturing with it than with his hands. “You. Who are you?”

Akira swallowed, hoping to all exitance that his voice didn’t sound stupid and nervous in the wreck of all the fear and terror that had been coursing through him, and replied in a reasonably normal, if slightly scratchy, deep voice. “Kurusu. Akira Kurusu.”

The man cocked his head to the side, bird-like, still smirking, but seeming a touch confused. “I haven’t heard that name before. Are you some neophyte Dragon Slayer, out on some...” He waved a hand vaguely. “...training expedition?”

Akira shook his head. “Just a traveler.”

The man, or dragon, or whatever he was narrowed his eyes at Akira, grin fading completely. “No normal ‘traveler,’” he finger quoted at Akira derisively. “Could stand tall when met with a creature like me. Speak the truth, or-”

“Anyone can stay standing in the face of death,” Akira interrupted, feeling emboldened, mostly because he was alive now a solid six minutes after he had been certain his life was going to end. “If they refuse to bow their head to fear.”

Dragon-man stared at Akira, silence growing thick between them in the wake of Akira’s words. Akira face fell and he started to sweat- what the hell was that? _Anyone can stand in the face of death if they ignore being scared shitless???_ What kind of bullshit comeback was that?!?! It sounded cool in Akira’s head- hell, it made sense in his head, but did it actually? He couldn’t remember the phrasing he used, but he was pretty sure it worked grammatically at least- fuck, but what if it didnt?! Akira barely ever talked to anyone, except to trade for supplies once every couple of weeks, why the fuck did he think some “”“”“Cool”“”“” fucking catchphrase was the smart thing to use in front of some scary, murderous, magic dragon-man?! Fuckin-

A soft sound, lighter and gentler than any Akira had heard in some time, interrupted his meltdown, and it took a few moments to realize it as the man’s laughter- not the cruel, haughty thing from before, but light and innocent and genuine, almost like a child’s. The laughter only grew, the man starting to clutch at his stomach, bending over, and as it grew in volume, it lessened a hell of a lot in innocence, and started to sound a lot more mean-spirited.

Akira frowned, then as the man started snorting in-between bursts of laughter, his frown twisted into a pout. “It wasn’t that bad,” he mumbled.

The man lifted his head, and for fuck’s sake there were tears in his eyes, he was laughing at Akira so hard. He pointed a finger weakly towards Akira, barely managing to speak through his chortling. “That was the stupidest, most faux-heroic shit I’ve heard in _years_ ,” He managed, before devolving into a fit of giggles. “It sounded, oh heavens, you sounded like you walked out of some drunken bard’s half-assed attempt to woo the barmaid-”

He burst into snickers and giggles again, and Akira rolled his eyes, hands on his hips now, tapping his foot as he waited out this rude dragon-shit’s chuckle-fest. “Uh-huh. It was a cheesy line, laugh it up-”

“ _Cheesy?_ ” The man was starting to collect himself now, but little bursts of laughter still slipped through his lips every half second or so. Akira would have found it pretty cute, if the guy wasn’t a huge asshole, literally and figuratively. “Akira Kurusu, that was as if you tried to separate the curds from an entire, live cow.”

Akira groaned, which only seemed to make the man laugh more. He glared at the asshole. “You are an asshole,” he told the man.

“Well, yes,” the man said, then didn’t follow up at all. After a few more sporadic giggles, he seemed to gather himself, and regarded Akira with something akin to appreciation in his eyes, still smiling that jagged, toothy smile of his. “You’re an interesting one, Akira Kurusu. I haven’t been interested by a human in...” He looked up in thought for a few moments, then shrugged and returned his gaze to Akira. “Well, a depressingly long time, let’s leave it at that.”

Akira smirked a little, and sketched out a little faux-bow. “I’m honored, your Dragonity.” The man snorted inelegantly at that, and Akira’s smirk grew. “Not that it needs saying, but you’re pretty interesting yourself.”

The man raised an eyebrow. “‘Pretty’ interesting?”

“Well, you’re pretty, and you’re interesting,” Akira quipped, his infinite pool of jokey flirtations coming in handy as always. The man blushed just barely noticeably, but was still smirking, still amused, which Akira considered a win. “But yeah, you seem pretty cool.”

“High praise indeed,” Dragon-boy quipped, then scooped his helmet up from where he had dropped it on the ground while laughing. “I’ve been in need of something interesting in my life for some time. I think I shall accompany you, Akira Kurusu.”

Akira didn’t frown, but he felt and probably looked rather confused at that. “Wait, accompany me?”

The man just blinked, a perfectly pleasant look on his face. “Hm? Yes, that’s right. You said you’re a traveler, right? I’ll travel along with you, enjoy the curiosity of your exitance for a while- assuming, that is, that you aren’t a bumbling fool in the face of anything other than a Dragon, and you don’t get yourself gored by a Bicorn, or something like that.”

Akira puffed, pride a little rankled at the suggestion, but not in a bad way, and he was smiling again anyways. “I’ve been living off the land for a few years now. Well, not farming, but surviving in the wild and all that. Yeah.” Nice one Akira, totally saved it, you absolute idiot. He tried to cover up his verbal stumble with unearned cocky pride and a smirk. “If anything, I hope you’re just as limber in your human form as you are in your dragon one.”

The man let out a bark of a laugh, and gave Akira a sharp, challenging look, murmured “Oh, I most assuredly am,” in a tone that sent tingles up Akira’s spine. The moment passed quickly, though, and the man reached out his free hand, then seemed to think better of it, and took a few moments to hang his helmet on a hook at his waist, then remove his guantlets and store them similarly. He offered his hand again, bare-skin this time, pale and lightly scarred. He looked Akira in the eye, said pleasantly “Goro Akechi- Goro is fine. A distinct pleasure to meet you, Akira Kurusu.”

Akira took his hand, keeping eye contact and somehow managing not to blush or get sweaty at how soft and warm Goro’s skin was. “Pleasure’s mine in equal measure, Goro, and my friends just call me Akira. Traveling companions, too.”

Goro raised an eyebrow. “You have other traveling companions?”

Akira looked off to the side. “Well, no, but if I did, they’d probably be cool enough to just call me Akira.”

Goro smirked and let go of the handshake, patting Akira comfortingly on the arm. “I’m sure they would, Akira. Shall we away to your camp?”

Akira nodded, smiling back as he gestured in the general direction he had been heading in before... well, all of that. “Right this way. I was just about to make some food when you, uh, arrived.”

“Oho?” Goro raised an eyebrow, easily keeping pace by Akira’s side as they walked. “What was the menu, dare I ask?”

Akira’s smile faltered, and grew a little nervously tight as he rummaged in his bag, retrieving what he had looted earlier. “A single fish! Uh, trout, it looks like, fresh from the knapsack of a Mokoi.”

There was a brief silence, then Goro sighed, shaking his head. Akira felt more nervous instantly, and was certain he definitely looked like it too, but Goro quickly gave him a pat on the arm, sympathy clear on his face. “I had forgotten how slim the pickings tended to be when traveling alone. Here, show me to your camp, then I’ll gather us something more appetizing.” 

Well, far be it for Akira to refuse a dragon’s help. “Far be it for me to refuse a dragon’s help,” he said smartly. Goro winced a little, and Akira quickly corrected himself, “Or more accurately, I’ll eagerly accept help from a new friend.”

Goro’s gaze dashed towards Akira, his face redder and softer and more surprised and innocent than Akira had yet seen. “A... new friend?”

Akira smiled, and nodded. “If you want to be.”

Goro’s shock morphed to a very pure, blindingly bright smile, and he nodded a lot. 

Walking side by side, the two new companions headed back towards Akira’s camp.

\---

A few minutes after arriving at camp and making sure he had the place memorized, Goro moved a generous distance away and without any fuss morphed back into his dragon form, then took off, flying into the distance. A half-hour or so later, Akira having just managed to get a good fire going, Goro returned, a fat, bloody bison clutched in his maw. 

He spat the animal out as Akira looked on, awed, and with one swipe of his talons, sliced the beast’s skin open, and started peeling it away and pulling out its guts. It wasn’t the first time Akira had seen an animal skinned and cleaned, and was far from the first time he had done so himself, but seeing a massive, violence-shaped dragon do it was a whole other affair. Akira watched, transfixed and more than a little horrified, as Goro isolated the usable cuts of meat from the beast’s body, laid them gingerly over its skeleton, then, making sure that Akira was a safe distance away, blasted the whole thing with a concentrated, terrifyingly intense-looking cone of flame from his pursed lips.

A few minutes later, Goro transformed back into a human, removing his helmet a little tiredly and fanning himself off as he stood in front of the most beautifully roasted cuts of bison Akira had ever seen. A few seconds later, unable to contain his excitement at how fucking cool his new friend was, Akira jumped Goro in a wild, laughing hug, shocking the man and turning him beet-red.

They ate well that night, and for the first time in a long while, both fell asleep full in belly and fuller in heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from [ the song of the same name](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8BR8AHoE6w) by the amazing Tatsuro Yamashita
> 
> I've wanted to write more stuff for a fantasy world like this ever since the (now abandoned) Homestuck fic I wrote years ago, and I'm having a really good time with this one! As it says in the tags, for pretty much all of this, if you've played or seen gameplay of Breath of the Wild, you know what this world looks and feels like, just with some Persona added in. Dragon!Goro, though, was 100% inspired by some really adorable BNHA fanart of Dragon!Kirishima I saw on my dash a while back. Sometimes you just see some really good fanart and you're like "Wow...what if this, but words," and that was basically how this got started.
> 
> As you might have noticed, this is gonna be a short 4-chapter fic; I have ch 2 all done and some of ch3, and I'll be posting them over the next few weeks. However, like I said earlier, I discovered while writing ch2 that I really like writing these boys adventuring and galavanting about, so depending on how things go/what you all think of this au, I may write some sequel ficlets and one-shots too, later on. We'll see!
> 
> Next chapter for this will be out in 2 weeks, on 2/13! If you'd like more regular updates on my writing progress, or just would like to hear me ramble about gay shit, my twitter is [ @SevventhSteen! ](https://twitter.com/SevventhSteen)
> 
> See ya!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With a new, scaly friend in tow, Akira raids a monster camp, and makes some plans for the immediate and more long-reaching future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some basic fantasy violence in this chapter, but nothing too bad
> 
> Enjoy!

“So.... _this_ is how you make your living?”

Goro’s derisive tone was whispered, but no less judgy for it. Akira shot him a quick dry look, which Goro did not flinch at in the least, then sighed and returned to watching over the clearing in front of them. “I wouldn’t call it anything as noble as ‘making a living,’” he corrected, adjusting the heft of the worn Mokoi Bow on his back. “More like ‘surviving,’ really.”

The dragon-man next to him huffed through his nose, a move that would be far more impressive in his other form, as right now it just made him seem kinda childish. Akira didn’t mind though. The last three days of adventuring with the guy had been probably the most fun he’d had in years- though that wasn’t saying much, considering how dull and same-y his life had been since he had become a traveler. 

They had hunted down a whole herd of deer, worked together to clean their bodies, salt the meat, then hang it up to dry in a makeshift smoker that Goro had somehow known how to build back at camp (though perhaps it wasn’t that surprising that a man who could turn into a dragon knew a thing or two about the applications of smoke). They’d ventured into a nearby cave that led into the same mountain Akira had made his camp in the side of, one that Goro said he had always been curious to explore, but never had, and found a chest full of small, polished quartz rocks at the end. 

And now, Akira was showing Goro how he made his glorious living, rich as a merchant king from raiding shitty little monster camps. Before them, set up in a sizable forest clearing, was a ramshackle encampment, all raggedly-cut wood and lengths of animal skin serving as bedrolls, centered on a large campfire with a big hunk of meat on a spit above it. Scattered about the camp were some Andras and Koppa-Tengu, the bird-like monsters of the region apparently having called enough of a truce to live together. Most of them were gathered around the fire, skittering about as the meat cooked, but there were still some set up as guards around the camp’s perimeter, either patrolling on the ground, or peering about from the tops of short, wooden guard towers.

Goro sighed, not too noisily, but noisily enough for Akira to give him another dry look. The dragon was a fun partner, but impatient as hell- they’d only been casing the place for fifteen minutes or so. Still, the dragon grumble-mumbled irritably, “I don’t understand why you don’t just torch the place. These cretins are pathetically weak, one good blast of flame would roast them inside and out in seconds.”

Akira rolled his eyes, gently flicking the side of Goro’s head- a move that, as Akira had learned over the past few days, shut the dragon up almost instantly, regardless of the situation, replacing his grumbly expression with a shocked, almost blushy one. _He really must be unaccustomed to physical contact..._

Out loud, he whispered, “Well, for one, I’m not a super-cool dragon-man, so the idea never really occurred, Goro,” he murmured dryly, Goro blushing way more now, flustered and embarrassed that he hadn’t realized that himself. Akira smirked, then grew more serious, turning back to the encampment and pointing out several spots within. “For two, fire would make this whole thing pointless. See all the weapons they’ve got on ‘em?”

Each of the bird-men were armed, if you could call it that, all just rough hunks of wood carved into bows, or large, curving bones tied to wooden hilts and sharpened enough to classify looslely as swords and spear-points. “One blast of fire would be enough to ruin most of the haul I usually go for here.”

Goro puffed again. “I’m surprised they aren’t ruined just by entering combat,” he quipped.

“Well, most of them are,” Akira shrugged. He could feel Goro giving him a dry look this time, which he studiously ignored. “ _But_ , the ones that can last a round against me can usually last several rounds against other monsters, too. Also,” he stretched a finger out towards the far end of the camp, at another little wooden tower, shaped similarly to the guard towers, but a little taller. “ _That_ is the other reason fire is a big no-no for these raids.”

The dragon-man tried to wiggle his human neck around to get a better look, not seeming to realize what he was doing, clearly still a little unaccustomed to doing this sort of thing in human form. “Is that... ah, I see. The beasts’ treasure chest...”

Akira nodded- that was exactly what it was. Atop the tower, placed almost like a shrine, was a medium-sized wooden chest, decorated with animal skulls and spiky bones. “There usually isn’t much in there- just a few small gems and maybe some fancy magic arrows if we’re lucky, but if I lose out on that, I lose out on anything I can use for trade or bartering.”

“I see...” Goro nodded, and their conversation stilled, Akira returning to scoping out the camp. He had pretty much memorized the layout by now, and had a loose sketch of a battle plan forming in his mind...

“So? Are you quite ready, then?” Akira jumped just a little as Goro jolted him out of his train of thought, but he nodded all the same.

“Yeah, pretty much- this’ll be a lot easier with two people. Here,” He scooted closer to Goro, arm-to-armor-clad-arm, so when he pointed, Goro would be able to clearly see what he was referring to. “First, I’ll take out the ones on the guard towers- at this range, it should be easy to land an arrow through their heads without much worry. Once they’re down, we’ll split up, each sneak up behind one of the patrolling ones and off them quietly.”

Goro hummed, nodding as Akira went along. “And then what? The rest of them are all grouped together around that fire. Attempting to sneak up on one will simply show yourself to the monster opposite it in the circle.”

Akira smiled tightly, reaching an arm around Goro’s shoulders and patting them roughly. “Then, it becomes an all-out melee until they’re all nothing more than smoke.” His smile shifted to a smirk, already feeling the familiar, heady buzz of adrenaline starting to pump through him. He shot Goro a challenging look. “Think you can handle it?”

Goro just gave him a toothy, deadly grin in return, shrugging Akira’s arm off and lifting off from the ground to a crouching stance. “It’ll be over before you get your first kill, _traveler_.”

Akira chuckled, getting to his feet as well. “Good luck with that. I’ll give you a signal to move once the tower guards are down,” he whispered, and then he was off. 

Moving while crouched low to the ground wasn’t an easy skill, but it was one Akira had mastered over the course of his years in the wild. He maneuvered closer to the trees and shrubbery at the edge of the clearing, drawing his bow and nocking an arrow in preparation. Getting as close as he safely could, Akira waited until the patrolling guards were facing away from the towers, then took aim, and quickly loosed his arrow, watching it arc gracefully in the air before burying itself in the owl-shaped head of the Andras. The beast fell bonelessly to the side, its equipment thankfully staying up on the tower and not dropping into the patrolling guards’ line of sight, and before it had the chance to dissipate into smoke, Akira had already aimed and fired at the other tower guard, with the same, satisfying results.

He waited a beat, two, to make absolutely certain that none of the monsters had noticed, then he raised his hand, gesturing vaguely in what he hoped Goro would take as a signal. Without wasting time to check and see if Goro was moving too, he started sneaking across the clearing, towards the patrolling Koppa-Tengu on the eastern side of the camp, timing his move just as the monster turned its back in Akira’s direction. 

With practiced grace, he made it across the clearing and right up behind the bird-man’s back before it had taken even five more steps, pulling out a worn iron dagger he had looted off an Incubus a week or two ago, and quickly tearing it across the creature’s throat as soon as he was within range.

The beast went down without a sound, and puffed into smoke and debris. Akira sunk back into his crouch, turning to look over at the other side of the camp, just in time to see Goro reach his assigned guard. In what was probably the coolest move Akira had seen outside of his dreams, Goro tapped at the scaled, pitch-black armor covering his legs, flipping some kind of hidden mechanism as he did so, the scales parting to reveal a short but viciously-serrated, blood-red sword strapped to his thigh. In one smooth motion, Goro drew the blade and sweapt it through the form of the Andras in front of him, slicing clean through the monster’s body, from hip to shoulder, cutting through it as if it was no more than fog.

The thing split into two gross halves, and vanished into smoke before either chunk hit the dirt. Goro smirked at his handiwork, then cast a glance in Akira’s direction, his smirk only growing in cockyness and toothiness at whatever deeply-awed look Akira must have been wearing. He shook it off quickly, flushing in embarrassment, seeing Goro’s shoulders shake in amusement in response, then gestured towards the campfire. Goro nodded, his smirk growing dangerous and toothy and somewhat inhuman, and both men slunk towards the gathered monsters.

As Goro predicted, they were spotted before they got within striking range, but as the bird-man shrieked and hooted in shock and fury, they both quickly sprinted the last few steps and cut through the nearest monster, Goro with a horrible, vicious slash, Akira by grabbing the monster’s shoulder, turning it around, and ripping his dagger through its neck.

Cries of rage sounded all around them, and the battle began.

Akira had a pretty good head for fighting- he always had, his instincts birthed back when he was fighting against bullies in his village, and honed when he was abandoned and forced to fight for his life against the monsters of the wilds. The world felt like it moved in slow-motion around him, clashing blades and twirling bodies nothing more than an easily-comprehensible playset for him to toy with. He ducked under the jab of a spear, thrust his knife up into the underside of a jaw, spun around and loosed an arrow into a distant Andras trying to loose one of its own.

And in the few moments where Akira’s side of the fight was clear, he glanced over to see Goro fighting with a grace all his own- the monsters foolish enough to slash at him with a sword, he simply batted the weapon aside and cut them in twain. The beasts idiotic enough to try and block his blows, he cleaved his blade through the steel and wood and flesh and bone beneath. Those few that were clever enough to try and flee, he was on within instants, running them clean through and holding them there until they burst into shadow around his sword.

Between the two of them, Akira and Goro cleaned up pretty nicely.

When the last of the monsters had been dealt with, the two of them began looting the place clean of anything useful or valuable, Akira finding Goro to have an excellent, not-all-that-surprising-in-retrospect-for-a-guy-whose-species-was-famous-for-hoarding-treasures eye for what was worth picking up and what wasn’t. After a good twenty or so minutes of picking around, several weapons and chunks of precious stone and ore tucked safely away, they both climbed the ladder up to where the monsters’ treasure chest was stored. Akira sketched a silly little half-bow, gesturing for Goro to do the honors, and the dragon-man rolled his eyes as he hooked the tip of his boot under the chest’s lid and flipped it open.

As Akira predicted, there wasn’t much in there; a few bundles of arrows enchanted with an electric spell, some bottles of agility tonic the monsters must have stolen from some hapless adventurer, and... wait a sec-

Goro laughed, a loud and victorious sound, as he leaned down and gathered up a bundle of no less than seven shimmering, polished chunks of sapphire, all of them pretty sizable too, Goro had to use both arms to hold them, as if he was holding a big cat or a child. He grinned toothily down at the treasure, then up at Akira, looking more than a little mocking. “‘There usually isn’t much in there,’ he said.”

Akira held his hands up defensively, grinning as well. “Hey, I’m all too happy to be wrong this time around. These guys must have run into a loaded, depressingly poorly defended trader or something. Damn...” He leaned over towards Goro, poking and prodding at the gems, and whistled low. “These’ll be worth a hundred fifty gold each, easy. Maybe more, if we find a traveling armorer or craftsman that’ll buy em.”

Goro’s grin grew all the more victorious, and he jerked his head at Akira, who was very confused for a second, then realized what the dragon was asking and hurried to grab Goro’s satchel and pull it in front of him, so Goro could store the gems safely, alongside the other, more breakable valuables that they had decided the man without a half-dozen sharp weapons strapped to various parts of his body should carry. They divvied the rest of the monsters’ treasures up between the two of them, then clambered back down and headed out in the direction of their camp.

“We should probably head out from here before nightfall,” Akira spoke up a few minutes into their walk. “Entirely possible that those monsters back there had friends out raiding or gathering supplies, and I don’t want to be caught with my pants down when they track us back to camp.”

Akira could feel the raised eyebrow from Goro without looking towards him- and the judgment. “You sound like you’re speaking from experience, Akira.”

He grimaced. “I may or may not be thinking of a time when a bunch of Kelpies stormed my camp while I was in the middle of a shit.” Goro made a disgusted noise, to which Akira could honestly do nothing but nod. “My feelings exactly. I fought them off, but I still get sweaty flashbacks thinking about the very specific, very horrible fear of fighting while trying to avoid getting your junk bitten off by a horde of angry horse-monst-”

“Point taken!!!” Goro interrupted, then made another grossed-out noise. “Point very, very well taken. Such a glamorous life you’ve led, Akira.”

Akira just shrugged. “Hey, not all of us can transform into a badass dragon at will. Sometimes you cut through a whole camp full of demons, sometimes you fight off some crazy horses with your dick out. That’s life, dude.”

“Indeed...” Goro sounded a little uncomfortable when he spoke that time, and Akira looked over at his companion, suddenly nervous that he might have said something wrong. Before he could ask, though, Goro continued. “So, where are we headed, exactly?”

“Hm...Probably east of here,” Akira wagered, willing to put Goro’s uncomfortableness to one side for the moment, if Goro was. “A few miles from here, there’s an Inn and Stables that should be able to take at least some of the stuff we’ve gathered off us, and should be a convenient rest stop for some merchants that can buy the rest. Plus, you can’t beat a hot meal and a roof above your head.”

More awkward silence from Goro, and this time Akira would not put it aside, could not physically handle something this uncomfortable going unresolved. “Something wrong? If you’re not a fan of staying at inns, we can camp nearby after we sell our stuff. The woods around that place are usually pretty free of monsters.”

Goro’s eyes went wide, and a little blush started growing on his cheeks. “You... uhm, that is, you would want me to come with you?”

Akira frowned, deeply confused. “Uh, of course I would, Goro. We’re traveling partne- oh, uh," His confusion was quickly replaced by a valiant but probably futile attempt to mask his sudden disappointment as he put two and two together. “Unless this was just a couple-of-days thing. You don’t have to stay if you’re bored, or-”

“No!” Goro interrupted, surprisingly forcefully- surprising to him, too, as he got very red in the face when he realized how loud he had been. “No, uhm, I’m very much not bored, Akira,” he tried again, softer this time, though way more nervous-sounding. “Adventuring about with you these past few days... I don’t think I’ve enjoyed myself this much in years, truth be told.”

The disappointment and fear roiling in Akira drained away in an instant, replaced by something warm and soft that he hadn’t felt for some time, and he smiled. “Me too. You’re really nice to be around, Goro.”

“M-me?” For a black-scaled dragon, Goro was certainly looking redder than a tomato right now. It was a good look on him, Akira decided. One of his favorites. “Goodness... Frankly I’m just surprised you’d want to keep me around, especially when you’re headed towards much more... human company.” He gestured vaguely towards the East, in the direction of the Inn Akira had mentioned. 

Akira just laughed, short and sharp. “I’d much rather have you around than a dozen non-dragon people, Goro. There’s... a lot of reasons I travel out in the wild instead of living in a nice, safe village or town, but the biggest of them is that with very few exceptions, I haven’t found a human yet that I’d want to spend more than a couple hours with, max.” He smiled at Goro, that warm softness inside prompting him to say something that he’d otherwise be way to embarrassed to express. “I think I could spend a hell of a lot of time with you, Goro, and never feel bored or tired. As much as you’d want to spend with me.”

He had a feeling that his cheeks were just as red as Goro’s now, but it was worth it to see the other man look so flustered, so out of his depth, cranking his head to face as far away from Akira as he could, fingers twitching at his sides. “I... I share those sentiments myself,” he tried, voice high and adorable. “Word for word.”

Akira’s heart leapt higher than a heart healthily should, and he moved to walk closer to Goro, bumping his shoulder against him and leaving it there. “It’s a deal, then. Come on, let’s break down the camp and head out. Best to get there before nightfall.”

Goro nodded shakily, bumping Akira’s shoulder back, though lighter, to avoid impaling Akira’s soft, fleshy body with the spiky scalemail that covered Goro, and they continued on their way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is shorter than I thought it'd be, cause I thought I had written more, but when I went to edit this the other day, I hadn't!
> 
> Tbh I'm on the fence as to whether to continue this or not- I like the world, but I hit a roadblock with the next chapter a while back, and have been working on other fic mostly since then. If you folks like this enough and want to see it continued, plop some comments down below and let me know! If/when I decide to keep going, I'll edit the end notes here to say so!
> 
> Until then, I'll be updating my Childhood Friends Longfic, [ 'Like The Moon, We Borrow Our Light,' ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21227510) next Thursday, 2/20, and tommorow, 2/14, extra special for Valentines day, I'll be uploading the first part of a fun little V-day ficlet too! So much Akeshu goodness! Excitement galore.
> 
> If you wanna keep up with my more regular writing progress, or just hear me get really excited about getting into stuff like half a year after everyone else got into and subsequently out of it, my Twitter is [ @SevventhSteen! ](https://twitter.com/SevventhSteen)
> 
> See ya soon, and remember to leave a comment if you want more of this au!


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